Some questions / pilot replacements

[Schrthilf]

Hello,

i am playing the `43 campaign against AI, german side and i have some questions. It is the first game and I made some mistakes but I am getting better, slowly. Ingame, its Feb.44 and the raids are covered by the escort fighters all the way to their targets and back, its getting hard now..
I try to keep my losses as low as possible, but the replacements for lost pilots are really bad. They have 50 - 60 experience. It started at the beginning of february, I think.
I lost 1100 pilots in this campaign, with a kill ratio (planes) of 1 : 4,8.

Is this scripted or are my losses too high?
How many pilots do I get per round, and how many pilots does the Allies get?
Is there a possibility to check the morale of some allied units? - some of them are really nervous when they reach the dutch coast.

[warshipbuilder]

Is this scripted or are my losses too high?

Probably your tactics need adjusting.

How many pilots do I get per round, and how many pilots does the Allies get?

Germany 15, Axis partners total of 8. USAAF 25, RAF 10, CW 12, Everybody else total of 14. This is on to do list i.e. making adjustments.

Is there a possibility to check the morale of some allied units? - some of them are really nervous when they reach the dutch coast.

No. You could play against yourself and monitor everything. I am sure there wasn't a single Allied pilot who wasn't nervous once they were over continental Europe.

[mark dolby]

Hi.
I have just finished a LW 43 campaign with points victory on turn 310 (22/6/1944). V1.04
Looking through some of the Allied B-24 units I can see pilots with 47 experience. In fact the 44th BG does not have a pilot over 57 experience.
We all know how bad the LW replacements were late on. Does Allied training get worse to reflect the huge losses that were taking place in my game?
Allied losses 26375 planes, 23520 pilots
LW losses 5902 planes, 2042 pilots
I have a Co-Axis pilot at 23 experience. What roughly do these levels translate into training flying hours?
I have heard that LW got about 150 hrs towards the end of the war whilst US/RAF pilots had 450. Is 150=23 experience and 450 = 50 experience?
Also do excess LW pilots keep getting assigned to units as I have several JG with 47-50 pilots, and one with 72.
Just curious and in no way pulling anything apart.

[simovitch]

The code is complex but here's my take on it:
Generally at-start pilots are in good shape, it's the new recruits that bring down the group experience so large losses reduce group experience which is the avg of all the group pilots.

New pilot experience roughly inherits that of the group it joins in 1943, but in 1944 it becomes more or less:
GER=40
AXIS=20
UK=45
US=50

If avgas industry is getting pasted the LW experience really suffers for new pilots.

There is no formulaic relationship between historic training times and experience.

New pilots get assigned to groups that need them, but as pilots return from the hospital the roster might get longer than there are bunks in the Quonset hut.

[Mappo]

Hi, in the case of pilots who return from the hospital and find no place in their old Squadron, Group, Staffel etc. what happens to them? Thanks in advance

[mark dolby]

I think all wounded pilots return to their parent formation full stop.
I am not sure how the replacement pilots are allocated but I have the following

Sturmstaffel 1 has 23 pilots with 12 WIA all returned
III JG1 has 73 pilots with 25 WIA all returned

Yet I have other Gruppen needing pilots. Surely new pilots should be in a pool only leaving to fill spaces made by combat losses and not allocated every turn as I think is happening. I don't know but III JG1 should have no more than 61 pilots even if all WIA returned on the same day.....

Finally, I have II JG4 which arrived on turn 300/301 and has not seen a single combat mission. Yet this unit now has 53 pilots on roster?

If I send up all of III JG1 on a mission which 36 fly? A random selection, or the most experienced? Will my new pilots get few chances to raise their experience in an over populated mess?

[medaloffairness]

I love this game since it was published the first time and spent hours and hours on it.
I am really happy that someone took the courage and develop the game further.

Mark dolby mentioned an annoying topic which I also don`t understand. Some squadrons are lacking pilots while other have double / tripple the amount of pilots.
If there would be a chance to relocate pilots within the same aircraft type it would be much appreciated. This way we don^t need to change the code, but can move pilots if needed.

Now, some history review about the experience of German pilots.
We can agree that the starting fighting experience of starting German pilots and starting US pilots is more or less the same. (maybe not?)
Then, by encountering the enemy and surviving the battle is where you get the experience from + the guidance of the pilots in your squadron.
Therefore the number of sorties flown with enemy contact is the driver for exp.
We can read in the history books that many US pilots had 25 flights without contact with enemy planes. This is also one of the reasons, why the US pilots don`t have Aces with 100+ downed aircrafts.
Not because they are lame, but because they didn^t have enough targets per plane.

What killed the German pilots was the technological and numerical advantage of the US pilots, not the reduced training time alone.
The opposite are the Russians... they had enough reassources but a tactical / operational / communication disadvantage and trained their people not as "state of the art" till 1942.

To cut a long story short:
Please open the allocation of pilots on boths sides + keep the exp level entry level almost equal or increase the number of exp gained per flight with contact with an enemy (please)

[Bella]

Seems strange that German replacement experience would be so close to that of Allied, considering that by 1944, Allied pilots were receiving roughly twice the training time that the Germans did, due to German losses, fuel shortage and lack of training aircraft. The difference was even greater in operational aircraft. Many German pilots had less than a dozen hours training in the aircraft they went into combat with. The few Experten left hardly made a difference. My two bits: German 25, Axis 20, UK 45, US 50

[mark dolby]

I think what Simovitch is saying is that with no fuel shortage the pilot experience would be as he quoted. BUT there was a shortage and the Allied player needs to duplicate that to push down the starting experience of new LW pilots, probably to something like you are suggesting. I had new axis pilots coming into units in the low 20's/early 30's with no appreciable fuel shortage in my last LW campaign which ended a little further along than D-Day.

[mark dolby]

Does distance from home country effect the replacement schedule for Axis minor units? I have a Rumanian staffel operating from a strip just North of Rome. This unit has only 6 pilots and has not had a replacement in days. No Allied missions have flown into Eastern Europe for over a week and no losses to those Axis minors at full strength for some time.
I guess you are going to say rotate the units?

[RichardL58]

ORIGINAL: mark dolby

Does distance from home country effect the replacement schedule for Axis minor units? I have a Rumanian staffel operating from a strip just North of Rome. This unit has only 6 pilots and has not had a replacement in days. No Allied missions have flown into Eastern Europe for over a week and no losses to those Axis minors at full strength for some time.
I guess you are going to say rotate the units?

Your problem could be lack of undamaged rail communication north of Rome.